Welcome back to Beloved. In this episode, Rhea and Shari discuss the way this section of the story has a sense of suspendedness to it in ways that are hard to understand or explain. They discuss this phenomena through the unique p.o.v.’s: Baby Suggs (beyond the grave), the “four horsemen,” and Stamp Paid. They discuss the moments of “communion” happening and what each one is signifying, pointing toward and away from. They talk about the way the back and forth of the narrative time leaves them feeling suspended over time itself, and the implications of this for the characters, especially Sethe who is now anxious to live in the “no-time” behind the locked door of 124 with Denver and Beloved.
And because so much of this story leaves them beyond the realm of understanding, they end with poetry from Gwendolyn Bennett: “Epitaph.”
Epitaph by Gwendolyn Bennett
When I am dead, carve this upon my stone:
Here lies a woman, fit root for flower and tree,
Whose living flesh, now mouldering round the bone,
Wants nothing more than this for immortality,
That in her heart, where love so long unfruited lay
A seed for grass or weed shall grow,
And push to light and air its heedless way;
That she who lies here dead may know
Through all the putrid marrow of her bones
The searing pangs of birth,
While none may know the pains nor hear the groans
Of she who lived with barrenness upon the earth.
Next week Rhea and Shari will discuss the final portion Beloved: pp. 236-323.
The next book they are deep reading is Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry (yay!!)
